I've tried different brands of CFL ( generic, GE, Philips, Nelson ) , many sizes as well (including a monster 65W unit) and the failure rate is high compared to the proposed life on the boxes. Initially I think it was that I had them in enclosed diffuser bulbs and I dare say with the way our Summer weather is here it killed the first batch through overheating of the electronics in the CFL bases. However, after ensuring they all had good cooling (even bare bulbs) there were still plenty of failures, so I'm just thinking that overall it would seem that CFL drivers aren't yet up to scratch, or at least the manufactures are cutting corners on the components.

I've switched to the faux-traditional-halogen replacement bulbs and they seem to be doing a lot better. Looking forward to converting to LEDs soon.

The fact that "professionals" are using Word ( or similar ) for their work for quality output betrays the lack of their sanity in the first place. 20 years ago Microsoft-Word was a joke of a tool for legitimately professional publishing tasks, a Fisher-Price mallet in a world of steel hammers. Back then it was LaTeX, Quark or some other probably-insanely-obscure DTP system, even WP5.1, but over the years people have forgotten how it was (probably with good reason though, none of them were all that fun and easy to use and never came with cheesy clipart). As a publisher, I still find ms-doc files to be inconsistent a lot of the time (especially from some writers) and almost always needs to be fixed up by selecting the text, copying in to a fresh file with a very strict style and manually reworking it; as opposed to LaTeX (hand generated or via LyX) where you can generate print-ready novels consistently without all the screwing around.

It would seem we've traded the steeper learning curve for substandard results and since it's been happening long enough now, it has become the 'professional way'.

Now get off my lawn!

Indeed. Most systems that come in here with N360, McAfee, even AVG now (try removing that sucker, it's really persistent unless everything is perfect!) are a mess in terms of performance and hijacking the browser search fields and forcibly reinstating excessive services and apps in the startup.

Clear it all away and install MSE, sure the client possibly will get infected in the future but I've found regardless of what they have had installed they invariably get infected, may as well go with the AV system that doesn't choke the system to death nor constantly shove itself in your face while you're trying to get work done. The client still "feels" protected and their system doesn't suffer profoundly.

Not initially, because people go blind when confronted with the unfamiliar and cannot see a damned thing despite it being "right there, in front of you!". Sure, once you see and know it, it's dead easy.

I repair a lot of different phones, but I have to say the 3GS is a nice beast overall - anyhow, the point of this post is, if at some point you get that battery replaced in your 3GS, be aware that you might run in to a few hiccups with it shutting down at 60~30% capacity and then going into an endless reboot. If that happens you can break out of it using instructions at this location - http://ctpc.biz/iphone3gs-battery-fix.html - oh and try get the APN: 616-0435 battery.

So needed some good mod points for this.

The number of times I've watched my own projects go from "beautiful and clean" to "crufty hack jobs" all because of handling corner-cases is probably well... the same as the number of projects I have :(

A lot of new content /producers/ are avoiding DRM like the plague as well ( We are, and almost all members of our loose, but large association are ). So it's changing.

I do wish Amazon would just get over itself and add ePub ability and be done with it... likewise release a linux-native reader.

It's a legitimate pain in the butt. Intel deliberately does this to prevent the chips/chipset cannibalising their other offerings. I for one would have no problems running this hardware if I had 4~8GB. Not that it matters to Intel, but I'll be going with the AMD E450 APU instead.

We do have 4G here in Australia, it's just on a band that the Apple iPad doesn't support.

"They great games, like online scrabble..."

"I'm in!"

Hilarious - the post that picked up on the OP's hidden message and it gets modded as off-topic.

For those who it went WOOSH for, take the first letter of each word...

>> Firefox Is Really Struggling To (survive).

F.I.R.S.T.

The rabid geekness in this place blinds so many.

Would love to be in your household, especially finding a full manual! Most devices here will give you a wiring layout (for hookup and minor diganosis, namely stoves and fridges) but not an actual schematic of all the fun bits in the system (eg, dishwasher or washing machine control panels) - for those you more often than not need to do some digging. The manufacturers generally don't bother putting out those finer details because most of their accredited service personel do module replacements, not circuit board repairs. In the older days, for sure, you'd get a full schem in your TV, radio, heck almost everything, but starting from the 80's that dried up more and more.

That all said, I'm glad with some of the progress, we've moved to almost all surface-mount type gear and that is a lot easier to work on than the horrid pin-through (oh dear god, I am glad I don't have to go desoldering DIP40 any more), okay, BGAs can be a bother but are still do-able.

Many "properly" ceramic knives have enough metal in the ceramic to trigger the detectors - but of course I'm sure there's plenty of places making them without bothering. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceramic_knife

Well, humour aside,I really hate MIME as well - I write a few MIME handling tools (ripMIME, alterMIME and such) and I have to say I just HATE IT.

Would have much rathered we ended up with something more akin to a zip or even tar.gz. Sure Microsoft tried to give us TNEF but that was a disaster for its own reasons.

Thanks, seems like you've found the essential point of divergence between our experiences. Yes, I was going for the classic checkout. :(